1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to puzzles and amusement devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to a puzzle or amusement device incorporating shiftable or transferable pieces therein.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Shiftable or transferable pieces are the basis of many previously well known puzzles and board games. Some games, like chess and checkers, which utilize separate but movable pieces, go back to ancient times. Still other games, like tic-tac-toe, utilize a prearranged coded grid, as does checkers and chess, which more often than not is a piece of paper marked on with a pencil. The transferable elements are marked directly on the paper in pencil. Games of the foregoing type, wherein separate pieces or indicia are used on a preestablished and standardized grid area, are not known or available in a self-contained amusement device.
A self-contained amusement device offers many advantages. It is going to be generally smaller and therefore more easily carried. The self-contained pieces cannot be lost. A self-contained game is readily adapted to taking along on extended trips. The relative bulk and relatively large number of pieces make traveling with a chess or checkers set both cumbersome and risky, due to the possibility of loss of some of the separate pieces.
Other amusement devices relate strictly to puzzles which are to be mixed up into an unsolved configuration and then elements or indicia of the puzzle are rearranged into a solved configuration. It is well known to store the elements in a common base or other structure. For instance, Rubik's Cube utilizes a pair of intersecting axles to permit rotation thereabout by groups of cube-shaped elements or indicia. In Rubik's Cube, the indicia are color-coded and the object is to manipulate the separate elements into a solved configuration wherein each surface of the cube is a specific color.
Another such self-contained puzzle is The Fifteen Puzzle of Sam Lloyd. The Sam Lloyd puzzle involves two-dimensional movement of square pieces within a base portion. A single area of the base portion is vacant to allow sequential movement of individual squares into the area, which area changes with the movement of each such square. The puzzle, in fact, has no solution for the reason that it is assembled in an unsolved position and can never be manipulated into a solved configuration.
Applicant's copending application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 304,092, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,415,158, also involves a self-contained puzzle that is color-coded in a solved position. Intersecting geometric figures having elements movable from one geometric figure to the other geometric figure by rotation of the geometric figures about their respective axes is shown.
So far as applicant is aware, the movement of coded pieces within a self-contained puzzle has, at all times heretofore, been based upon movement of the pieces within a single plane by rotational or translational movement within that plane. No one has combined such movement with a separate movement in a third dimension out of the plane of rotational or translational movement. This additional movement allows simulation of games using movable separate pieces, such as is required in chess, checkers or tic-tac-toe. Furthermore, as a puzzle, additional complexity and eye-hand movements are introduced that would make the puzzle more interesting, as well as a greater challenge.
The ability to permit transferal of pieces across a plane or interface, wherein translational and rotational movement of the elements occurs, has not heretofore been known. It has therefore not heretofore been known to selectively pass these pieces so as to control subsequent transfers of other pieces. Such a physical or mechanical transference is analogous to and can be used to represent certain functions of Boolean logic, which is the foundation for basic computer circuits. Such devices as "OR" and "AND" gates can be simulated in a puzzle configuration or even incorporated into teachings situations.